Gay Libertarian Party activist Martin Moulton has filed papers with the D.C. Board of Elections to run for both the office of mayor and the office of chairman of the D.C. City Council in the city’s June 19 primary.

Under the city’s election law, potential candidates can file for more than one office, but the election board only accepts for placement on the ballot a candidate who submits the required number of petition signatures for just one office. The filing deadline for the June primary is March 21.

“Given the turbulent state of the Wilson Building, I have been exploring with Libertarian Party and D.C. party leaders, registered Libertarians and many Democrat voters about which race I should toss my hat into, but I will keep my options open for the next week or so,” Moulton told the Washington Blade in an email.

In 2016 Moulton ran as the Libertarian Party nominee for the D.C. congressional delegate seat held by Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton. Although he lost to Norton by a margin of 85 percent to 6 percent, he received 17,272 votes, significantly more than the 11,553 votes that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump received in the D.C. presidential race.

Moulton also ran way ahead of Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who received 4,501 votes in D.C. in the 2016 presidential race.

Lou Chibbaro Jr. has reported on the LGBT civil rights movement and the LGBT community for more than 30 years, beginning as a freelance writer and later as a staff reporter and currently as Senior News Reporter for the Washington Blade. He has chronicled LGBT-related developments as they have touched on a wide range of social, religious, and governmental institutions, including the White House, Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, the military, local and national law enforcement agencies and the Catholic Church. Chibbaro has reported on LGBT issues and LGBT participation in local and national elections since 1976. He has covered the AIDS epidemic since it first surfaced in the early 1980s.
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